Civil Society/High Society/Rules

 Status in High Society are your keys to the castle. Politicians depend on your donations, civic institutions look to you for charitable giving, the police are apt to look the other way when you're caught drinking behind the wheel. Your surname, if not your given one, carries the weight of wealth and prestige. It's scrawled in the note pad of the chief of police under the heading 'Do Not Cross'. You can start and end careers. Build or destroy lives. Create fortunes for aspiring capitalists or turn a land developers visions of gentrification and wealth into an endless parade of bureaucratic red tape and protesting tenant unions. You are the asshole that asks 'Do you know who I am?' rhetorically before walking away from a pointed gun. In a city of plebians, you are Cicero.

• Status 1: The child of new money, a host of some successful social functions, the new guy at the country club
• Status 2: New money, the child of old money, the financial planner to the wealthy who knows where the bodies are buried
• Status 3: Old money, the name on the side of the hospital wing, the owner of the country club
• Status 4: You married a DuPont, your family founded a college, your name is synonymous with charitable giving
• Status 5: Your family dates back to the founding of the city, your family ruined a family that dated back to the founding of the city